{"id":148949,"date":"2023-09-03T12:08:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T06:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/?p=148949"},"modified":"2023-09-03T12:08:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T06:38:07","slug":"cambridge-updates-bitcoin-mining-index-to-reveal-true-power-consumption-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/cambridge-updates-bitcoin-mining-index-to-reveal-true-power-consumption-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambridge Updates Bitcoin Mining Index to Reveal True Power Consumption – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After three years, the University of Cambridge has implemented a major update to its Bitcoin<\/a><\/span> Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI<\/a>) to more accurately assess the global energy footprint of Bitcoin miners.<\/p>\n

The conclusion?<\/p>\n

The previous power estimates were greatly overestimated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first and most noticeable discrepancy appears in 2021, where our previous CBECI model estimated an electricity consumption of 104 terawatt-hours (TWh), 15.0 TWh higher than the revised model estimate (89.0 TWh),\u201d the report<\/a>\u00a0read.<\/p>\n

A terawatt-hour (TWh) is a unit of energy equivalent to outputting one trillion watts for one hour. For context, if used for one hour per day, an average incandescent lightbulb consumes 21,900 watthours in a year.<\/p>\n

The university\u2019s 2022 power estimate was also adjusted down by 9.8 TWh, from 105.3 TWh to 95.5 TWh, putting Bitcoin\u2019s electricity consumption that year in roughly the same league as U.S. tumble dryers (108TWh).<\/p>\n

The need for revision arose from the university\u2019s former methodology that every \u201cprofitable\u201d hardware model released within the past five years \u201cequally fueled the network hashrate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though effective for most of Bitcoin\u2019s lifespan, the methodology started exhibiting shortcomings in 2021 after China\u2019s mining ban.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis led to overestimating the number of older hardware and underestimating the proportion of newer hardware,\u201d the report\u2019s author Alexander Neumueller told Decrypt<\/i>.<\/p>\n

ASIC hardware devices have become \u201cconsiderably more efficient\u201d and powerful over time. ASICs are \u201cApplication Specific Integrated Circuits,” machines specially designed to mine Bitcoin as efficiently as possible.<\/p>\n

Given that the ban created a shortage in data center capacity, Cambridge said it is \u201creasonable to infer that mining operators would have already replaced all old machines with newer models.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cambridge model good, but not perfect<\/h2>\n

Shortcomings also emerged during \u201cexceptionally profitable mining periods,\u201d when the old hardware distribution estimates presented a \u201cdisproportionally large number of older devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

With its new methodology, Cambridge incorporated recent hardware mining deliveries, though many \u201cassumptions and simplifications\u201d still applied.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the report\u2019s findings reinforce those from a Coin Metrics study<\/a> in June, which used the blockchain-based fingerprints<\/i> left behind by mining machines to determine which hardware was dominating the network.<\/p>\n

Though the report\u2019s findings were not incorporated into Cambridge\u2019s new methodology, Neumueller said that he holds the Coin Metrics authors\u2019 work in \u201chigh regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karim Helmy\u2014lead author of the Coin Metrics report\u2014told Decrypt<\/i> that he was glad to see Cambridge\u2019s updated figures taking public company hardware data into account.<\/p>\n

However, he believes its figures are still inaccurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new methodology continues to overestimate energy consumption in bull markets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For example, Cambridge estimated a \u201cconsiderable increase in energy consumption per terahash\u201d between 2020 and 2021 which \u201cis unlikely to have actually occurred in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cambridge\u2019s findings were also supported<\/a> by CH4 Capital founder Daniel Batten, whose fund invests in companies using Bitcoin mining to clean up the environment.<\/p>\n

His model estimates<\/a> Bitcoin\u2019s current power demand to be 13.095 GW, versus Cambridge\u2019s 12.89 GW estimate. This figure presents the power it takes for all active mining devices to function.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Cambridge estimates that the Bitcoin network has consumed 70.4 TWh of energy\u2013so far.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After three years, the University of Cambridge has implemented a major update to its Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) to more accurately assess the global energy footprint of Bitcoin miners. The conclusion? The previous power estimates were greatly overestimated. \u201cThe first and most noticeable discrepancy appears in 2021, where our previous CBECI model estimated an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-148949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148952,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148949\/revisions\/148952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}